January 22, 2007
It snowed yesterday. Twice! A very wet and soggy weekend. I enjoyed it, with a fire stoked in my studio stove, but I kept thinking about those poor artists at the Thunderbird Wine Festival up in Carefree. They got rain and snow on all four days. Must have really dampened their business.

"It was all here [in Indianapolis] for me: music, science, people so smart you couldn't believe it, people so dumb you couldn't believe it, people so nice or so mean you couldn't believe it."
—Kurt Vonnegut, on growing up in Indiana

Three Thousand Attempts At Something Approaching Art
Saturday marked the day I passed 3,000 sketches and as promised, here's a look back at the best of those efforts. Yesterday I had Kathy go through the four and a half sketchbooks and choose her favorites. The former teacher is so thorough, she put notes at the bottom, on post-its. For the two pages below, she said, referring to the bottom-left full face image: "I like his eyes." Of course, this is Mickey Free and the studies on the right hand page are attempts at giving him a mysterious look.



Cowboys have always been one of my favorite subjects and here are two pages that capture the range of my efforts. Kathy wasn't fond of the guy in the middle with the glasses, and I said, "Yes, but this is a typical small-town businessman, who has furred out for Pioneer Days. He's a Jack Mormon and likes the ladies." How do I know this? Easy. I grew up with so many guys like this.



And here's more cowboys, this time emulating Lon Megargee (on left), the images on right are studies for the Pike Landusky vs. Harvey Logan of the Wild Bunch shooting. The sketches are much better than what I ran in the magazine.



Onion Headline de Jour
Paroled Prisoner Excited To Hear The '80s Are Back

"Look, I'm old. Joe Namath isn't passing footballs in the crowds anymore. You ought to se what Mozart looks like by now. I'm old, for God's sake. I'm terribly tired."
—Kurt Vonnegut